Jul 16, 2026
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Rotterdam’s Modern Architecture Is waiting
Explore cube houses, the iconic Markthal, and Europe’s busy port in this essential 2026 guide.
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Love Netherlands
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Dear Netherlands,
Somewhere in the Netherlands right now, someone is pouring a pint of something dark — perfectly. Somewhere, a tulip field is waiting to bloom. Somewhere, a baker is sliding the first tray of stroopwafels onto the counter while the smell fills the whole street. The Dutch don’t make a fuss. They just make things the way their parents and their parents’ parents made them.
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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In today’s email:
- Rotterdam, Netherlands: Your Complete City Guide for 2026
- At The Café — Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
- Around The Web — Tracing Your Family in North Holland: A Heritage Travel Plan, Texel Island Netherlands: The Complete Visitor’s Guide, Tracing Your Family in Zeeland: A Heritage Travel Plan + more
- From Love Netherlands — Tracing Your Family in South Holland: A Heritage Travel Plan
- Dutch Food You Will Love — Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
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Rotterdam, Netherlands: Your Complete City Guide for 2026
👉 Read the full story
Rotterdam, Netherlands’ second-largest city, surprises almost every first-time visitor. Most travellers arrive expecting a calmer version of Amsterdam and find something completely different: a bold, angular skyline, the largest port in Europe, and a food scene that feels genuinely world-class. Rotterdam earned that boldness the hard way. German bombers destroyed the entire city centre in May 1940 within a single afternoon. What the Dutch built in its place was not a reconstruction but a reinvention — and visiting Rotterdam today means walking through the most architecturally adventurous city in the country. Love the Netherlands? Join our free newsletter for hidden Dutch gems → inlovewithnetherlands.com/subscribe Why Rotterdam Feels Unlike Any Other Dutch City On 14 May 1940, German aircraft destroyed almost the entire historic centre of Rotterdam in a single raid. The Dutch surrender…
👉 Read the full story
Have you been there? Do you have a memory of this corner of the Netherlands? Hit reply and tell us — we’d love to hear your story.
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At The Café
Café Chris — The Oldest Brown Café in the Jordaan
Café Chris on the Bloemstraat opened in 1624 — making it, depending on whom you ask, the oldest continuously operating bar in Amsterdam. The bell-pull next to the urinal is still wired to the bar, so the bartender knows when to flush. The walls hold framed Ajax memorabilia from the 1970s, and the regulars are mostly Jordaan locals who have been coming since their fathers brought them in for the first jenever. It’s small, it’s loud on Saturday nights, and it’s one of the most authentic brown cafés left in the city.
👉 Visit the café
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Around The Web
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From Love Netherlands
Tracing your family in South Holland means standing where Dutch history happened. This is the province that shaped the Dutch nation — and sent more emigrants abroad than almost anywhere else in the country. Rotterdam’s harbour launched thousands of ships carrying families to South Africa, America, and Australia. Leiden sheltered the Pilgrim Fathers before they crossed the Atlantic. Dordrecht, the oldest city in the Netherlands, holds church…
👉 Read the full story
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Photo via Love Netherlands
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Dutch Food You Will Love
Raw Herring — The Dutch Test
Every spring, a Dutch ritual unfolds on the streets of Amsterdam, The Hague, and Scheveningen. Herring stalls put out the year’s first catch — the Hollandse nieuwe — and locals queue to eat it raw, tipped back by the tail, sometimes on a soft white roll with onions. It tastes of the sea and of brine and, if you’re lucky, of nothing at all in the best possible way. Foreigners tend to grimace the first time. The Dutch laugh gently. “Three bites,” they say. “Then you love it forever.” They are usually right.
👉 Read the full story
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